When Evgeni Malkin returned to the Pittsburgh Penguins lineup for Game 2 of their first round playoff series, there was more trepidation than you would expect with the NHL’s second-most prolific point producer over the last decade.
Some mentioned that Phil Kessel seemed to click better with Nick Bonino than Malkin and were worried about upsetting chemistry. Others pointed to Pittsburgh’s production with the Russian out of the lineup as a factor.
That gap of nearly a goal per game is huge and, over a sample of 26 games, it’s not the tiniest sample size either.
There are mitigating factors in there, specifically that all of Malkin’s missed games were under Mike Sullivan. A significant portion of his 57 regular season games played were under Mike Johnston, when the entire team struggled to score goals.
With the Penguins losing Game 2 — which Malkin came back for — that will lead to confirmation bias. So let’s look at this in a couple of ways. Did the Penguins score less under Mike Sullivan specifically with Malkin in the lineup? And if they did, was this a function of generating fewer scoring chances, or just fluctuations in percentages?
Under Mike Sullivan, the Penguins scored 3.24 goals per game in the regular season through 54 games, which gives us a baseline to compare the team with and without Malkin.
Malkin missed two stretches of games this season: 10 games from Feb. 5-24, and 15 games from March 13 to the end of the regular season. Those stretches may not be equal, so let’s look at them separately compared to when Malkin is in the lineup, with the February injury labeled “Malkin injury 1” and the March injury labeled “Malkin injury 2”.
The Penguins didn’t fare so well during Malkin’s first injury, but they absolutely crushed it during his second one. Over the 15 games Malkin missed to end the season, Pittsburgh scored 60 goals, which brings the average goals per game while Malkin was out up to 3.48. With him in the lineup, the Pens scored 3.03 goals.
It should be noted that both those marks are very good, only the Dallas Stars and Washington Capitals eclipsed three goals per game over the entire regular season.
This is a much smaller gap than the initial tweet would indicate, but there’s still a significant gap, so is it possible that Malkin’s presence cuts down scoring chances for the Penguins? Let’s dive in.
Surprisingly, the Penguins did produce more scoring chances per game in all situations when Malkin was out of the lineup, but the difference was miniscule. The Penguins produced just 0.6 extra scoring chances per game, and 0.2 extra scoring chances on net per game while Malkin was out, which isn’t nearly enough of a difference to account for half an extra goal scored per game.
The difference seems to be more about fluctuating percentages than actual play, although the Penguins and their coaching staff deserve a world of credit for improving, even marginally, after losing one of the best offensive players in the world.
It’s possible that some chemistry was stumbled upon when Malkin went down the second time, however that shouldn’t scare the Penguins from heavily using their second-best forward.
